Arrivederci — Salve
by Clorinda
Summary: Nagira wants a taste of Italy, and the woman who went there without him. One shot. Set after Pursuit, by omasuoniwabanshi. I suppose it can be read as a stand alone, too.


**Arrivederci — Salve**

**By** Clorinda

**Rated**: PG

**Category**: Drama

**Summary**: Nagira wants a taste of Italy, and the woman who went there without him. One-shot. Set after Pursuit, by omasuoniwabanshi. I suppose it can be read as a stand alone, too.

**Author's Note**: This a simple one-shot set after **omasuoniwabanshi**'s really, _really_ likeable fanfic, "_Pursuit_," the story of Nagira and Mai— one of my favourite protagonist-OCs. Deeply indebted to her for coming with a story like that in the first place, and extremely grateful to her for letting me borrow the characters and the premise. **This story is set in Italy**. Also, not to add to the number of OCs, but Marius, Nicolo (and his chauffeur and parents) and Sister Theres are all mine.

I didn't know the name of Nagira's canonical secretary, so I'm just calling her "Haruka."

And if my Italian is not _completely_ rubbish, then the title means "Goodbye — Hello."

* * *

She was in the vegetable garden, kneeling in the freshly-turned soil, trying to finger out the tiny, blood-red pill that had dropped amid the radish-heads poking out of the earth. Marius, with his queer old-fashioned name, leaned over a rake, watching her with a sourly-pinched mouth.

"Eh, Sister," he began again, trying to dissuade her. "It'll grow with the plants when the spring comes. I'll 'ave a medicine tree, and pluck off your pills and give them to you then. It's not right— a holy daughter to be kneeling and fumbling in the mud of old Marius Donatelli..."

Mai Izuki smiled but did not get up, using both hands now. If she _didn't_ find the last of the anti-allergy medicine she'd be drugging herself on for the last few days so that Father Juliano would not have to find out how badly she reacted to the cucumber salad she was regularly forced to dine on, well, she reasoned, he probably would not survive heart attacks at his age...

"Sister—" pleaded the old labourer again, gripping his rake so tight his sunburnt, liver-spotted knuckles were going to go white.

_Sister_ — _holy daughter_ ... the naïve epithets made Mai smile, a strained, tight little smile choked by a lifetime's bitterness. Sometimes, in her dreams, the bitterness and the guilt did not even come ... only the hot surge of power, knowledge she was powerful.

But what did Marius know of that? A simple labourer living out his life in the lush country, shaded by the sun's shadow coursing over his cottage, standing over the vegetable garden he had strived to nurture ever since his children had grown up and flown away ... What _did_ he know? She did not even tell things like these to Father Juliano most of the time— the shameful, pounding remorse, the creeping guilt about pretending to be holy when she was not.

The Father was unchangingly the same. "God does not know how to make mistakes that cannot be rectified."

Witch blood had stirred first within her, a forceful, damning fury that he should dare to call her and her Craft a _mistake_, and then horror for feeling things she thought she'd learnt to suppress. Later, in the darkness of her room, the curtains blowing softly across the floor in the sleepless midnight wind, she realized he was talking with her.

There had been sheepish thankfulness, mortification that he had read her so easily, and darkly, ominously, a Witch purred in content satisfaction that he had called her "God." The side of her that overpowered her in her dreams was proud of the epithet.

Other times, Mai smiled without malice, deception or need for either. She was happy, mechanical, struggling and fighting. The church became her world— a veil that cascaded over the truth. It was difficult to both think and not think of the past because sometimes it flooded her from within, not letting her breathe, but a human is born to adjust.

She smiled broadly, with a triumphant whisper. "_Gotcha_!"

A round red pill peeked daringly out at her, hidden by dirt. She picked it up, wiped it, sat back on her heels, and dusted off the knees of her robes.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Marius sounded shamefully relieved, and dropped his rake to the ground. "Would you like to come in for a pot of tea, Sister?"

Mai considered it lingeringly. "All right..." she consented tentatively, "if only your wife is asleep."

Marius nodded fervently. "Come in, come in, Sister..."

She got up and followed him into the brick cottage, narrowly jumping out of the way as the rake clattered to the ground. The accommodations were poor and shabby, and iron pots and pans hung from the rafters overhead. There was a kettle hung on a hook above the crumbling fireplace, and Marius was tossing in a lump of coal. The dining table was mall, sawed into half, and now only served two or three.

From a bedroom, Mai could hear the restless rustle of bedsheets, and could imagine Marius's wife tossing and turning painfully in her dreamless sleep. Poverty wrenched Mai's soul, and she adjusted the wimple on her head as she realized not all of her position was a cruel sham. Some of it _was_ real ... the _people_ she helped were real...

Marius was asking her how many cubes she wanted in her tea; his voice was coming from somewhere far away.

There was someone she wanted to help, and Mai's heart ached because she barely could. She wanted to heal herself so that she could go back home.

* * *

She went back to the church, to find someone else in her room, sitting on her bed. Her heart flew into her throat in a convulsive leap.

Calmly, he turned his head to glance up at her, frozen in the doorway, and sedately called out, "Come in, Sister."

Something flickered inside Mai — the _real_ Mai, this time — prickled by guilt at the beautiful sham. It affected her stingingly to hear that word from her lips, when he _knew_ it was not true.

And what was _he_ doing here? The questions racing through her head, racing against a tumult of feelings, were all deafened by the simple reasoning: this was _highly_ uncharacteristic.

"Father—?" she whispered falteringly. "What are you doing in my chambers?"

He looked austere and serene and blissfully, coldly oblivious at the same time. He had one of her bed-side framed photographs in his hand. "Who are these people, Mai?"

Heart still pounding uncertainly, she walked over to him. A downward glance at the photograph made her heartbeat ricochet again. "That one is a Mr. Hirata, Father," she said softly, vividly remembering the man who had cut her hair, "and the other," she added, "is Shunji Nagira."

"Yes," he said patiently, "but _who_ are they?"

The stolen apple was sliding painfully down Mai's throat. She said unfalteringly but hushed, "They were _friends_ from Japan."

Juliano Colegui was old but not deaf. He had perfectly heard the soft, strange emphasis on the second man's name—almost like a mournful caress.

* * *

It was getting difficult to wrap up the conversation now— the helicopter was roaring wildly as it slowly descended, and none of the occupants could hear one another inside it. It was feet above the helipad, and for Nagira, that was enough. He popped open the tight metallic door, ducked his head out the open space.

The rotating blades dangerously whipped the air, and he was careful to bend his head as he leapt out, landing hard on the painted cement of helipad seven feet down. He landed in a crouch, fell flat on his back and rolled away, with the dust from the undersides of people's shoes in his coat— as the helicopter landed.

The blades were still flying, and Nagira lay tensely on the ground, heart in his throat, unable to get up lest the low-swinging plastic blades should neatly slice off his head. As the helicopter finally fell silent, he was on his feet again, brushing the dust off his shoulders. Two people briskly disembarked: Haruka (JUST name of his new secretary— canonical) and Nicolo Voizin.

Haruka, patting down her normally immaculate hair that had been tossed about in the helicopter's whirlwind, didn't appreciate the pseudo-daredevilry; her pursed lips screamed her opinion at her boss. He shot her a cocky grin, but she only said acidly, "I suppose you were trying to outdo Triple X?"

Beneath her green fuming exterior of sourness, he knew she cared, so he let it go without comment. It was finally starting to sink in he responded in the oddest ways to his hired help.

There was a car waiting for them outside the airport, a shiny black Ferrari. The driver barely seemed to notice Nagira's heavy fur coat or Haruka's dragonishness. Nicolo Voizin blushed under the pointed stares directed at him, as Nagira held the door open for the lady.

"I have other relatives staying in town," he mumbled half-shame-facedly, embarrassed of this open display of wealth, almost without knowing why. Rolling his eyes heavenward, Nagira ducked into the car, and he followed last of all.

The car started, and backed out of the airport. There was little space in the backseat for three large adults, and they were forced in, knees squeezed together.

"I hope he'll not mind seeing me again," said the young man to Haruka, his voice flustered with nervous energy. When he laughed, it sounded like a titter.

"You talking about Juliano?" interrupted Nagira to elbow himself into the situation. He'd seen the looks drifting and being snatched up between the two of them, and he would not appreciate having another of his secretaries being lured away by marriage. _Not all loves end in marriage_, the back of his mind reminded him with grim meaningfulness— _but_, he thought tightly, it was stupid to take chances.

Nicolo Voizin was Juliano Colegui's sister's first-born, estranged from the family when his mother had eloped with a French evangelist with dubious circumstances. This child of impropriety was so ever-conscious of society that Nagira could never help but flinch.

* * *

The barren country road had changed a lot over the years that had trampled over it. The car door slammed after Nicolo as they climbed out of the Ferrari. No more was the road motorable, the dust and potholes bored by neglect had overtaken the winding path that led to the church rising like a spire of smoke in the distance.

"He's letting himself go," whispered Nicolo not entirely to himself. Seldom could he bring that honorific, _Uncle_, to his lips. "He's furrowing deeper and deeper into his madness."

Nagira listened but his hearing was distinctly separate from his body. There were rumours — there were _always_ rumours — about Juliano, and he was the only one standing in the shadow of the truth. Juliano was a flame, a quietly burning flame that glowed in the darkness, surrounded by the ugly aura of his rumoured subversion. All moths know how to seek out a flame. Nagira was a butterfly who had danced with a gentle moth once.

"We're walking, are we?" said Haruka loudly, not blind to the queer grip of the wistful sadness on the men. One after one, they slowly shook it off, dodging away from the snatching hands of their deeply personal paradises lost.

Italy was wilting away as they started off down the beaten track, Nicolo Voizin's full-cheeked, reddish boyish face aglow with sheltered naïveté, growing thinner and more pinched with his thoughts of his rapidly-approaching reunion. Haruka did not glance at Nagira, but the latter, too, was dark. He was thinking of his brother — his _half_-brother — and his foreign woman who had come from Italy as well. He was thinking of his own woman who had become a foreigner to him.

Someone in black was slowly coming down the road towards them — a nun, the hem of her habit grazing the dust, the loose flow of her wimple blowing lightly in the breeze — hands clasped before her — her bearing gentle, her face lifted up towards them.

Nagira felt like there was a hard fist balling into his stomach, winding him, dragging his breath out and tying his throat so that he couldn't breathe. He did not know this woman— she wasn't Mai. _She was not Mai_. It echoed and thudded in his head until the pain tightened, almost physical.

"Good morning," she called from the distance; "you're the ones Father Juliano has been expecting? Mr. Voizin, and his friends ... good morning, I am Sister Theres. I hope you had a pleasant journey."

"Excellent one — thanks for asking!" Beaming, Nagira lurched forward to meet her, grasping her hand tightly. While Nicolo had lost all power of speech, Nagira's enthusiastic grin could be confused for a grimace. Haruka alone held herself with quiet dignity that was being shattered by the company she kept.

The nun was reserved and quiet, and politely replied to all of their questions, keeping up the flow of conversation, but she disappeared beyond the old man standing in the open doorway of the church, as soon as they reached it, disappearing into the dimness beyond.

"Good morning," greeted Juliano Colegui, an imposing monument of silver and obsidian. His gaze drifted over them as he closed the doors behind them, flickering wanly as it lighted on Nicolo. "You are a young man," he said quietly.

"I am," murmured his nephew, his face suddenly pinched with his shame and his embarrassment.

"You are so young, and I am so old," he went on. "What would the youth of tomorrow want with the men of day before yesterday?" He seemed coldly unaware of the two others, shoving them away from the edges of consciousness. "The first and last time I ever saw you was in the photograph of an infant. You have grown." There was the weight of double meaning in those words.

"I came because I missed my family," said Nicolo quickly, very fast, ducking his head like a schoolboy, staring at his shoes. "I thought perhaps you, of all people, would not be ashamed to see me."

When Juliano sighed, the breath leaving him carried the weight of the world. "Your mother was ashamed. I never was."

Nicolo looked up so fast that his bones nearly snapped.

Behind him, he felt Nagira and Haruka moving away, intruders at last realizing their intrusion.

Father Juliano had visitors. Mai had heard of it from the milkman, who had overheard somebody else. She herself had not seen the old priest often since she had come back from visiting Marius Donatelli's sick wife to find him on her bed. She knew she had betrayed something that she must have never done. She did not feel remotely easy around him, not when he glided past her like a grimly austere ghost, always looking like he disapproved, always emanating that he knew.

* * *

They were sitting in the garden— the visitors. On the intricate inlay work bench, two heads close together, two birds. One of them was in a large fur coat. Tip of her nose pressed against the window as she peeped at them through the attic window, Mai's heart stopped beating a second before she realized it.

She was moving — her feet were moving — walking faster than she thought they could — _would_ — and she was floating down the stairs like she was on the back of the north wind — the doors were opening before her — and she was outside in the crisp morning air — running down the grass—

The black habit — a billow of cloth concealing a fast crumbling heart — swept past the suddenly vibrant greens and the flashing glimpses of season's flowers. Nagira had stood up a second and an inch before she barrelled into him. Haruka laconically rose as well, not missing the leap of electric recognition between the nun and her employer. Her instinct told her not to move, but she was not an animal, which was why as soon as the two of them exchanged the first syllable of "Hello"— she walked away.

"I — I never thought I'd see you here — of all places, I mean." One hand crept to her wimple to push it off because it was such a blatant lie — no one had lived further from holiness — but could not. Her eyes lingered on Nagira, afraid to stutter, afraid to lay the truth before him: _I never thought I would be able to see you again_.

"But I came, didn't I?"

"Yeah ... yes, you did..." Mai laughed, not knowing why it felt like the right thing to do. He was being earnest— she saw it in his eyes, in his face. Laughing then meant laughing _at_ him. "How did you know where to find me?"

He smirked, and with a thudding heart in her aching chest, Mai recognised him. _It was Nagira_. "You underestimate me," he said. He was older, there were lines etched into the corners of his eyes, eyes that had lost its gleam and shine. Eyes that had hardened now. She wondered if he still took in strays, but something inside her kept whispering that with time, people change.

Softer now, he said so that only they could hear, "A little birdie told me where you went almost as soon as you left." Her eyes flashed as they widened, and his smile only deepened. "I told you, Mai— that I love you. I wanted there to be an us. And there isn't one if you and I live in separate worlds, cut off from each other by ourselves."

Her voice faltered halfway through her question:

"Why did you never come earlier?"

He was looking straight at her, and there was emotion in his eyes. He knew his knees were trembling beneath him. "Because" — his mouth was dry, the thud of his Adam's apple made it hard to speak — "because I was afraid. I didn't know why you left."

_I ran_, she thought, realizing for the first time. "Thank you," she mumbled, looking away, fumbling with her hands as she drew them away from her habit at last.

"How do you like Italy?" Suddenly one of her hands was in his, and he was gently tugging her down to the grass, and she complied, soft, supple, malleable in his grasp.

"I like it here ... I'm celibate now," she lied.

"What do they call you here, Mariko Kanazawa?"

For a moment, her heart tore inside her because he no longer knew her name, and then it was bleeding, dribbling blood that ran down her face instead of tears. Because he did know her name, and her shell of an alias as his secretary was on his lips. He too had his hands brought before him — he too was shoving wildly — pushing her away — because he too was frightened.

Mai had no more tears left to shed, they had all fallen a long time ago, and she murmured slowly, "Sister Ersilia," and the two of them sitting alone and lonely on the grass, leaned forward, and took him into her arms, his chin resting on the top of her head, his bodily presence warm and pulsing beside him. Her hands were heavy and comforting against his back, and he crushed her to him like a flower, wanting to fight away whatever it was that kept them apart ... whatever this was that he couldn't fathom.

Because this was just not about love. This was about her. This was her story. Not his and his unmending heart.

* * *

Omens are supposed to come before the world shatters, but it was not until night that Mai had the dream.

She was in the dark and empty church, echoes resounding and crashing in the darkness. She was alone and afraid, and the stained glass windows beyond the altar towered over her, light falling through it in a cascade of shards of reds and yellows and blues and greens, and she tried to move because something in her head was screaming for her to run, but she stumbled as she tried. Looking down, she nearly shrieked— she was bound to the floor, thick ropes of white animal fur were entwined around her legs in the habit, strangling her from below. The vines of fur were crawling up her frozen body, and she knew they would kill her, crush her...

Tears of hot frustration were welling up behind Mai's eyes, but then the fur transformed into steel— and she laughed, the sound being ripped out of her throat, as she raised her hands, and the vines were torn away from her, twisting into a lump that she threw away from herself. It sailed with a resounding earth-shattering splintering crash through the window— and Mai woke up on the floor, her body aching all over when she had rolled off the bed to crash to the floor.

_Nagira_ ... _Nagira_ ... His name was like fingers digging into the soft flesh of her throat, and the night air was cold, and she was trembling. She was lying on the floor, like an angel laid for sacrifice, but she lay on the altar, defiling it, as the coloured moonlight fell through the stained glass window over her. This time it was not a dream.

Not even Nagira was one, and this time, once more, she felt the miles that drew them apart, forcibly pushing at them like two people on opposite sides of a door, yanking at the knob as hard as they could. He was gone ... for good this time, she knew ... because in cruel silence, she had ordered him away. From her.

There was a storm outside, and she heard the exploding thunder over the ragged patter of rain. She was still shaking as she climbed to her feet, staggering, stumbling through the winding corridors of the maze that would be her home forever. She collided with invisible walls each time she turned the corner, blindly, instinctively, desperately breaking into a run as she made for the doors.

They swung open at her touch like creatures at her bidding.

She walked down the steps, feet not touching stone. She was gliding, ethereal and beautiful, her head bare, her clothes steadily drinking the rain, her hair pressing down on her head. She was gleaming, shining, aglow with power — the sheer memory of power — a man at her fingertips to bend to her will like unbreakable metal could. She was the ultimatum. She was the unbreakable. She was the alpha and the omega.

Fall on me from above, tears of the sky. Sink into me, fill me for I am hollow inside.

She was crying. The flame was burning in her heart, leaping, roaring, bright dark orange; it was swallowing, consuming her heart; and the agony of her own power splintered her vision with salty, bitter tears. There were sobs choking in her throat, there was a banshee's wail of untold, unsung despair rising from within, and the weight of the world pulling her into hell, Mai fell on her knees, splashing in the slush before the steps of the church. Her sleeves fell back to reveal her arms, bare and iridescent skin in the darkness; her hands were raised up high in supplication, supplication to herself, to let the storm subside, to let the serpent wither like a forgotten rose.

There was a dark spectre standing in the open doorway of the church, tall, black, forbidding, staring down at her from the height of the furthest star, deeper inside her than the beating wings of her heart. And Father Juliano repeated slowly the immortality of Matthew,

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted ... Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth."

Even in grief, she would not be lost, not even in the sense of identity ... She was born with power that must be wielded, must be used, and she was powerful ... Not even a man who said he loved her could change that. Now, she must see the truth herself.

**—- End -—**

* * *

**Author's Note**: "_Pursuit_" is one story that deserves a seriously happy ending IMHO, but considering **omasuoniwabanshi**'s primary reason for writing it was to explain Nagira's behaviour, I didn't feel it was exactly right to tamper with something like that. 


End file.
